Keeping a cohesive team as you scale-up!

Love this piece from Sifted. In the rapid world of scaling your startup, ensuring cohesion between your Old Guard “OG” and New Guard “NG” employees is vitally important.

It is a key cultural pillar which will play a big part in you successfully growing or not. Therefore it needs to start at the top. As a leader of your organisation, you must drive a culture of continuous improvement and have one eye on future growth balanced with respect and recognition for the journey you've been on and the hard work of everyone who has got you to this point. 

Change is never easy for anyone. It is natural that your OGs will be protective of the ways that have been successful so far, but you must work with them to understand that to keep growing, you must innovate and you may naturally outgrow some of your existing systems and processes. 

It is imperative that leaders are crystal clear on the vision for the company and communicate the strategy on how to get there. With clear communication, you eliminate “surprises” and hopefully your OGs will buy into how certain changes, even if disruptive, will be best for the bigger picture. 

Additionally, as a leader you should acknowledge the efforts of those who have got you to this point. Everybody likes to be recognised for their efforts. It's human nature. So when you have a core team who have helped you achieve your early success, you should celebrate their contributions in an authentic way. I've spoken to many disgruntled candidates over the years, who feel underappreciated or even forgotten when the company is going through change and they inevitably eave. 

It is clear that you will need to bring in fresh talent with a new set of skills or experience for your next phase, with this comes the risk of creating tensions. When it comes to planning your new organisational structure, always consider any tangible opportunities for promotion for your OGs. It's not a case of being blindly loyal or rewarding people for tenure and not performance, of course they must have shown they're capable of making this step up, but if you do have some OGs promoted within the new structure, you will promote a more seamless transformation and they'll help promote the core values of the company to any NGs joining you.

We've worked with so many Founders of cleantech startups and the exceptional ones are those who lead with humility. They recognise they don't have all the answers and see it as a strength to bring in additional seasoned leadership around them to complement their skillsets. If your OG teams can see this at the top, then they are more likely to approach changes with the same humility.

Finally, I would always encourage that you integrate teams new and old together in a social setting. Team offsites are one perfect way for this. You, as a leader, can ensure your teams understand each other better and you can have everyone around the table to communicate the vision for the future that we mentioned earlier.

What other ways do you find effective in integrating your old and new teams?

Hyperion supports cleantech startups during their scaleup journeys, by finding top talent that will complement your existing teams and help you take the next step in your company's evolution. If you're looking for advise and support on your people strategy, then get in touch at david.beeston@hyperionsearch.com